White Crocodile

by Medina, KT

  ‘Once?’

  ‘No. At least I doubt it. I don’t really remember, but I broke my hand while I was hitting him.’ A grim smile touched his mouth. ‘I thought it would sort everything out, make it all fine, for her and for me. But it didn’t. Afterwards, I felt as if I was the one who had died.’

  ‘What about the girl?’

  ‘She was terrified. Terrified of me. I crawled into the Land Cruiser to try to pull her out and she started screaming, lashed out at me with a piece of metal and cut my hand.’

  ‘Did it hurt?’

  ‘Yeah, it hurt.’

  ‘But it helped?’

  He didn’t say anything. Just watched her.

  ‘Why do you do it? Why do you harm yourself?’

  ‘Because it’s easy. Physical pain is an easy distraction. It takes everything away. All the pain, all the anger, everything.’

  ‘You’ve got to stop doing that to yourself.’

  ‘Pain’s . . . so much easier than pleasure. You have to work hard to make someone feel good. Pain . . .’ he shrugged. ‘Just a flick of a knife, or a twist of a cigarette.’

  ‘Look, I know it’s not simple. That you can’t just—’ She broke off with a distressed shrug. ‘I want to say that I understand, but I don’t. And I don’t know what else to say, how to help.’

  ‘It’s my problem, Tess.’

  ‘No. It’s—’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  They lapsed into an uneasy silence; eventually, Tess broke it.

  ‘Would you do it again?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Kill him.’

  He nodded. They sat looking at each other across the table, wary, uncertain.

  ‘You can go if you want,’ he said quietly. ‘Obviously you can go.’

  She shook her head. ‘I travelled through Europe with a friend when I was sixteen. We caught a train from Vienna to Athens, through the former Yugoslavia. We had a carriage for eight to ourselves for most of the way, then in Croatia the train stopped and some Croatian soldiers and sailors boarded. Six of them came into our carriage. They were young, some about the same age as us, some a bit older. We talked all day, and when it was night they insisted on sitting on the floor so that my friend and I could lie down flat on the seats and sleep. We would have been happy just to sit, but they wouldn’t take no for an answer.’ She smiled. ‘I remember them so well. How polite they were. How shy and funny and gentle.’ She stood up, padded around the table and sat down next to him on the sofa. ‘Circumstances can drive people to do terrible things, Alex. You had the chance to help someone who couldn’t help herself and you did.’

  ‘I couldn’t help her enough.’

  ‘You tried.’ She reached out and stroked her hand across his cheek, then dropped it to his chest. ‘At least you tried. And we need to try again now.’ Her hand, on his heart, felt the beat of a jackhammer.

  Taking her hand, he raised it to his lips, as he had done by the river. She felt the warmth of his kiss and shivered. This time, she didn’t pull away.

  46

  Sitting cross-legged on the grimy concrete floor of an overcrowded dormitory, Dien used his body to shield from view the object he was holding in his hand. He didn’t want the other boys to see it, knew that as the youngest and smallest, he would have it snatched from him immediately – punched and kicked until he let go – if they found out he had something he treasured. He glanced over his shoulder. Without air conditioning or a working fan, the temperature in the room was already overwhelming. Most of the other boys were lying on their mattresses, two to each one, three for the smallest like him – panting like dogs, eyes closed, limbs lolling – and paying him no attention. He watched a couple kicking each other as they vied, hot, irritated and half-asleep, for more space on the mattress. Relieved that he had time undisturbed, he returned to the object in his hand.

  Closing his eyes, he tried to bring a picture of his mother to his mind, just her face, her eyes or her mouth. But even in these snatched moments when the orphanage was quiet and he could creep into a corner by himself, he strained to call her face to mind. He held an image of her in his head, slight, beautiful and happy, eager to cuddle him, to comfort him. He would climb into her lap and curl up – like a cat, she used to say, and laugh and bend forward so that her body was covering his, her arms wrapped the whole way around his body, and hug him tight. She had made him feel safe.

  And then that morning he had woken. Alone. He didn’t know how long ago it was now, but it had been before the rainy season. A few days after Māgha Pūjā, the Full Moon of Tabaung celebration, the day hot and calm. The dried boards of their hut, still soft and green with sap, had creaked as they withered and shrank in the heat. Three months, Chanthou had told him. He had been here in the orphanage for three months and in that time his mother’s face had become little more than a blur to him.

  The thing that hurt him worst of all was to think that he would soon forget everything about her: her face, the sound of her voice, the feel of her touch on his skin. That his memory of her was no more substantial than his breath, floating away from him, out of the window and into the blue sky. Every day, these things faded a little more.

  He curled himself into a ball – ‘like a cat, Dien’ – hugging her necklace in his hot palm, and closed his eyes, turning his little body to the wall, curling against it. Tears flowed from his eyes and he felt them trickling through the grime on his baby cheeks, hot and salty on his tongue.

  *

  Johnny could hear the barking, tugging, insistent. He hadn’t been sleeping. Couldn’t sleep. Memories filtered in at night. He kept on thinking of faces. Women’s faces, hard and crystalline, crowding his dark windows.

  And something pale behind them.

  The White Crocodile hunting at night.

  He had to stay awake, had to keep his brain occupied. He had tried kipping on the sofa during the day, but Keav was there, moving silently around the room, cleaning, watching, spying.

  The barking continued.

  ‘Shut up,’ he screamed. What the fuck was the dog barking at? They had sixth senses, dogs. Could it sense the women out there? He jammed his fingers in his ears, could still hear the barking, pulled them out again. He looked down to his lap, at the pistol gripped tight in his right hand. It was daytime; he was safe. The pistol was trembling like an animal. It’s trying to tell you something, Johnny. The ghosts, the Crocodile, the dog, the ghosts, the dog. Fucking dog. Fucking dog.

  Using the arm of the sofa for leverage, he hauled himself to his feet. Too quick; he slipped and fell. His crutches clattered against the hard wooden floor, the rest of him landed soft. He banged his left hand. It was swollen, infected, stank. He didn’t want to look at it. The towel was crusted to his skin. He hauled himself up again – slowly this time – found his balance, started to hobble across the sitting room to the sliding doors, made it to the balcony, rested against the railing for a moment, panting, straightened and began to shuffle left. The balcony went around the corner and ran down the side of the house. He followed it.

  The dog was tied to a chain in the yard next door. It was straining at the chain, feet planted apart, ears and tail erect, eyes fixed on something – but there was nothing there – barking. It glanced at him quickly, looked away, carried on barking. He raised the pistol. His arm was trembling. The barking was driving him crazy. He was sweating, shaking – fucking dog. Tightening his finger on the trigger, he took the slack, felt it snag, squeezed some more. The sound of the shot was deafening. The dog yelped, leaped and spun, the chain around its neck yanked taut, then it fell, limbs scrabbling in the gravel.

  He heard screaming. A woman. Women screaming. He squeezed off another shot, then another. One bullet hit the dog’s prone, twitching body. The other missed, ricocheting off the concrete yard and splintering into the side of the house. Johnny stood, staring. The dog’s back legs paddled, twice, as if it were dreaming. He saw movement out of the corner of his eye. A man. Th
e dog’s owner, he realised, coming out of his house. Johnny saw his face, the shock and fear. Saw him raise his arm. Something whined past him, so close he could feel its breath on his face. Plaster showered over his shoulder as the bullet slammed into the wall behind him. He leaped back, pressing himself against the wall. The man couldn’t see him; he was hidden by the lip of the balcony. He shuffled left, hugging the wall, heard another shot – way off target – edged around the corner, felt the cool glass of the balcony door behind him, and then its metal frame, grabbed it, turned, his back pressed against the frame, and slipped inside.

  Keav was standing in the living room, her hands on her face, staring at him, frozen in shock.

  ‘The ghosts,’ he hissed.

  Suddenly the house, the street, were horribly silent and still.

  ‘The ghosts were out there.’ He stumbled forward, stretched out his left hand, swollen, throbbing, reaching for her. ‘Those women – they’re coming back.’ She backed away, started to scream. Barking. Screaming. The dog. The ghosts. He brought the pistol up, right arm stiff, closed one eye, squinted along the barrel. Screaming. Barking.

  ‘Help me.’

  The sound of the shot filled the room.

  *

  When Tess woke it was hot, the air in the room close; she felt sweaty, her head muggy with snatched sleep. Kicking the sheet off, she sat up. The sun was high in the sky. Bright rays poured through the open bedroom window and flooded the bed. No curtains. A man’s smell, musty with sweat and aftershave, but Alex wasn’t there.

  Reaching over, she put her hand on the crumpled dent in the sheet where he had lain, where they had made love. It was warm, but a crisp, dry warmth from the sun. She reached the other way to the bedside table and grappled for her watch. It was half past one – she’d been asleep for nearly four hours.

  Sliding off the side of the bed, she padded into the bathroom. The window was open in here too, but the air was cooler, damp and woody, the leaves from the trees in the garden shading the room. An emerald-green gecko had crawled in through the window and was clinging to the white tiles of the shower, tongue flicking in and out, tasting the moist air. She stepped into the shower, switched the tap on and gasped as the cold water hit her; the gecko skittered up the tiles and disappeared out through the open window.

  After her shower, she dressed, made herself a coffee and went into the sitting room. Alex wasn’t there either and yet he was everywhere. The coffee table was littered with his things: an empty packet of Camels; a spare magazine for his Browning; a Khmer phrase book, the pages thumbed and curled; his white boxer shorts crumpled on the floor where she had tugged them off and thrown them. His scent on everything.

  She wandered over to the bookshelf. Most of the shelves were tightly packed with books; the middle shelf held a few photographs in solid wooden frames. Some of the books were in English. She tilted her head to read the titles: The Psychology of Behaviour, Human Instinct, Logical Chess. Nothing military, or about mine clearing. Another life he had lived.

  Dropping her gaze to the middle shelf, she studied the photographs. One was of a large white house at the end of a curving drive. Big picture windows looked out over a sweeping lawn; bougainvillea climbed up the walls from a flowerbed beside the front door and spread outwards above the porch, its flowers deep pink in the sunlight. The villa looked American – Palm Beach – or Spanish or Italian. Not Croatian. At least not what she would have expected Croatian to be from the news coverage of the Balkans conflict. Alex was right. She had watched and thought, as he had predicted, that they were all savages. All the same.

  Was that what was happening out here in the White Crocodile minefield? Someone making judgements about those women, someone who thought they understood what was going on in their minds, their imaginations? Using the myth of the White Crocodile to terrify, kidnap and kill?

  Family. It’s about family, she had told Alex. Was she right, or was that just her own past, the unfinished family business in her own life, talking?

  Putting the photograph back, she ran her eye along the shelf. There was another photograph, unframed, lying on its face. Picking it up, she turned it over, and started.

  The photograph showed Alex and Luke in a beer garden – the Riverside Balcony Bar – she recognised the wicker chairs and tables, the huge spreading trees shading them which made you feel as if you were sitting high up in the middle of the jungle. Luke had his hand up, two fingers raised in the victory sign, and he was laughing. He looked drunk. Alex, sitting across from him, was tilted back in his seat, arms folded across his chest. He wasn’t looking at the camera, he was looking at Luke, and the expression on his face was one of contempt. There was a cluster of empty beer bottles in the middle of the table, and something else. Tess shifted sideways so that the light from the window fell on to the photograph and lit the object on the table. It was baby pink, and she knew instantly what it was.

  She heard something behind her and spun around. Alex was standing by the patio doors; he was staring at the photograph in her hands.

  ‘You shouldn’t look at people’s things.’

  ‘You shouldn’t leave people alone in your house if you don’t want them to look at your things.’

  ‘I’m not sure that it’s supposed to work like that, Tess.’

  She held his gaze for a moment, turned and put the photograph back on the shelf, face down as she had found it. ‘You sent me the sock, didn’t you?’ There was challenge in her voice. ‘The pink sock.’

  He dropped his gaze. ‘I wanted you to come to Cambodia. I wanted to meet you.’

  ‘And then you wanted me to leave again.’

  ‘I had no idea that things would escalate like this.’

  Tess bit her lower lip. ‘How did you know I would come?’

  ‘Because I knew you before I met you. You’re a female mine clearer – there are precious few of those. And from what he . . . from what Luke said about you. You didn’t seem the type to leave well enough alone.’

  ‘You were right.’ She smiled. A smile that didn’t touch her eyes. ‘But perhaps I should have done. Though it’s too late now, isn’t it? For either of us.’

  47

  The sun was high, the sky clear. Heat shimmered off the tarmac of the airport’s runway as they drove past it, melting the outline of the buildings and vehicles beyond. Half a kilometre further on, Alex slowed and swung the Land Cruiser left to join a track which ran up a densely wooded hill towards Battambang’s orphanage.

  Tess clutched the email she had forwarded herself from the police station. Alex had waited in the Land Cruiser while she ran into the King Fy Hotel and slipped the girl behind reception a couple of dollars to print out the email and the photograph. As Alex negotiated the throng of bicycles and mopeds clogging the town centre, she read it out loud to him. Detective Inspector Wessex, from Greater Manchester Police, wanted help in identifying a Cambodian woman who had been found dead in south Manchester. ‘Could you look at your missing persons lists?’ DI Wessex had written. Alex laughed.

  ‘Missing persons lists. Who does he think he’s dealing with? Interpol? The only list Battambang Provincial Police will have is a list of local businesses who haven’t paid their protection money.’

  ‘Don’t be such a cynic, Alex.’

  The description DI Wessex had provided could have fitted eighty per cent of the teenaged Khmer women Tess had seen since she’d arrived in Battambang. Oddly, there was no photograph of the woman. The photograph was of a little boy, Dien Yathay, four years old. DI Wessex had also asked Battambang Provincial Police to see if they could track Dien down, and then call or fax him to let him know if the boy was safe.

  ‘I promised his mother,’ he had written.

  Dien’s mother, Jorani, was working as a prostitute in Manchester. The fax didn’t make it clear how Dien or his mother were linked to the dead woman they had found.

  ‘I can’t believe you stole that email,’ Alex muttered, glancing across. ‘You would have been
strung up if the policeman hadn’t believed your crap about Rolexes.’

  Tess shrugged. ‘Well he did. Testament to my great acting skills.’

  ‘It doesn’t have anything to do with the White Crocodile.’

  ‘Why are you so sure? Another dead Khmer woman, a teenager, who has given birth.’

  ‘Found in Manchester. Thirteen thousand miles away from here.’

  ‘And another little boy missing his mother. Here, in Battambang.’

  They almost missed the turning in the trees. Alex had to brake and reverse, then swing the Land Cruiser into the grassed-over drive. The ground was ridged with tree roots, and tangled undergrowth on either side created a natural alleyway, dragging against the doors of the Land Cruiser as they drove down it. After a hundred metres they pulled into an open grassed area in front of a squat two-storey building which reminded Tess of a Second World War bunker. It was austere and institutional-looking: beige paint peeling from its concrete walls, corrugated-iron roof dented and rusting, thick mosquito netting covering the small square windows.

  ‘Jesus, it’s a grim place,’ Tess said.

  ‘I imagine it’s cheap.’

  They parked and climbed out of the Land Cruiser. They could hear voices from inside the building, and shouts and snatches of laughter, slightly louder, which sounded like they were coming from the far side. In one of the rooms a tinny radio played Kylie Minogue, accompanied by a warble of voices.

  Inside the building was dark; it took a moment for their vision to adjust.

  The hall was a rectangular space with a corridor that ran off it, left and right. A window at the back of the hall let mottled, rust-hued light through the mosquito netting. The walls of the hall were a dull coffee colour, the floor concrete laid with a couple of straw mats, worn to nothing in patches by too much tread. The air in the building was hot: a heavy, claustrophobic heat, and there was a strong smell of disinfectant, masking the slightly weaker tang of faeces and urine.